AI/LLMs AI art bans are going to ruin small 3rd party creators

[Waller]

And for those who aren't doing it as a business? Who want to produce, let's say, homebrew (and human-written!) adventure modules as a hobby then ideally release them directly into the public domain at zero cost to the end user?

Not everyone does things just for profit.

For those people like me who ain't no good at art but who would like some art for their own games and-or public-domain releases, AI art is perfect as a) it's free and b) it can't have copyright on it.

Using in your home games is one thing. Publishing it, whether for $1000, $10, or $0, is another thing entirely. The amount of money you made isn't what decides whether something is ethically OK or not.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Using in your home games is one thing. Publishing it, whether for $1000, $10, or $0, is another thing entirely. The amount of money you made isn't what decides whether something is ethically OK or not.

An interesting take. In the boardgame world a freely available reskin of a game is not considered in any way unethical. Tens of thousands of variants using licensed and copywritten images and ideas superimpose dover an existing ruleset are available.

Those projects frequently include playing card matrixes ready to be printed through online services so other gamers can enjoy the fruits of the passionate fans labor.

Only when the projects turn to asking for money are they frowned upon.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not when you buy it. The previews have watermarks so you don't just download the preview instead of buying it.

Ah.

When I see the term "stock art" I've always taken it to mean a) free and b) intentionally released direct to public domain.

 

[Morrus]

Ah.

When I see the term "stock art" I've always taken it to mean a) free and b) intentionally released direct to public domain.

That's not what stock art means.

Most stock art (or video, or audio), you purchase off sites like Shutterstock, etc. Many newspapers or online news outlets, or even TV studios, use stock art in this way--an image of a type of aircraft, or an aerial drone shot of a town, or whatever. And many small publishers do, too. I have, and do.

On DTRPG you can get stock art from many of the artists in our community. It's very cheap. The permissions are liberal. But you have to pay for it (barely--it's really cheap). That's how a lot of artists make a living--they produce packs of stock art you can use in your publication. It costs you very little, they make a pittance per sale, but they hope to pay the bills via volume.

There is free stock art. But that doesn't mean stock art means free.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, if you're not doing it as a business then you don't really need art or can just grab... Whatever from around the internet for it instead. You don't need to worry about the legality of grabbing old artwork from the old 3.5e wizard archives and putting that on something

Oh yes I need to worry about the legality!

Taking someone's copyrighted art and including-releasing it in a direct-to-public-domain product ain't gonna fly very far, is it?

Per the optics of AI art versus other stuff, I'd genuinely recommend like, grabbing a picture of a NES era Final Fantasy enemy and using that instead of AI artwork though, because the reputation of AI art is not great and people will skip over it due to the AI artwork. Slap in the ol' "Oh, Square got in legal trouble" FF1 Beholder on something, though? Completely different.

I've found some excellent images in here, mostly from the (sadly) now-closed AI images thread in the D&D forum, and have in some cases modified them myself (I'm not bad at modifying existing images but utterly useless at creating them from scratch) for my game.

Further, unless there's blatant errors I can't often tell the difference between AI art and human art; and I suspect I'm far from alone in that.

 

[VHawkwinter]

Ah.

When I see the term "stock art" I've always taken it to mean a) free and b) intentionally released direct to public domain.

No, most stock art is not free, it's for sale, sometimes in a pack. Same with stock photography. Some of them you buy packa of images. Sometimes you get a subscription that lets you access a library for as long as you are subscribed. The difference is that is not images you personally commissioned, but images anyone can buy the right to use.

Stock Imagery is like when a videogame uses a pack of models youve seen in other games, like a hundred games that all have the same pack of photorealistic tree models in their game, because it's not necessarily worth it for them to pay someone to make trees, so you buy the trees and have your artists make your characters (or whatever). Lots of games use stock icon packs too. They are often affordable because it's a make once sell lots business model, but they are not free.

On the 3d side, There are all kinds of stock models for animals and weapons and armour and building parts and props and whatever as well. You could make a scene in blender with stock parts, and get the rendering how you want it, and do screenshots. You'd need to learn the software, but you could make passable art of scenes that way without being a proper artist yourself.

Free and intentionally released to the public domain is Creative Commons art / photography / textures. There is lots of it as well, but it is it's own category.

 

[Morrus]

An interesting take. In the boardgame world a freely available reskin of a game is not considered in any way unethical. Tens of thousands of variants using licensed and copywritten images and ideas superimpose dover an existing ruleset are available.

Those projects frequently include playing card matrixes ready to be printed through online services so other gamers can enjoy the fruits of the passionate fans labor.

Only when the projects turn to asking for money are they frowned upon.

An artist or writer only has one thing--the copyright to the product of their labour. The literal right to copy and distribute it. When you take that one thing away from them, the control over their intellectual property, and just give it to other people for free, you have taken away the one thing that enables them to make a living and left them with nothing. They can't even sell that right, as it has been taken from them. They don't have anything else; just the intellectual property rights. The copy-right. It's not fun having your rights taken away. The fact that thousands of people are fine with it is not a convincing justification.

 

[Morrus]

Further, unless there's blatant errors I can't often tell the difference between AI art and human art; and I suspect I'm far from alone in that.

This is an increasing problem, and it overlaps with the right to know what you are buying. When buying something--whether that's food, medicine, a car, a book, or whatever--there should be full transparency what you're paying for. If I buy a Porsche and somebody has put a Ford Mondeo engine in it, I've been defrauded. It should be the same with IP--I should know whether what I'm buying was made by people or was plagiarised by an algorithm (because if it was the latter, I would not have parted with my money--I don't buy things which have no value).

 

[VHawkwinter]

An interesting take. In the boardgame world a freely available reskin of a game is not considered in any way unethical. Tens of thousands of variants using licensed and copywritten images and ideas superimpose dover an existing ruleset are available.

Those projects frequently include playing card matrixes ready to be printed through online services so other gamers can enjoy the fruits of the passionate fans labor.

Only when the projects turn to asking for money are they frowned upon.

The "skin" is the copyrightable part. Board game mechanics are not covered by copyright, there's a decades old court precedent about that. People debate whether that applies to TTRPGs as well. I've read some articles by a copyright attorney that made strong cases that it does. Robert Bodine who runs Frylock's Gaming and Feekery made a series of articles talking about the precedent and what it means and how it applies to TTRPGs after Hasbro tried to threaten him in a C&D over his One Stop Statblocks project, and Hasbro backed down rather than fight him in court. (Because as a copyright attorney himself, he can fight them to completion, he doesn't have to pay for an attorney).

 

[Morrus]

The "skin" is the copyrightable part.

Yeah, I was mainly talking about the art.

Board game mechanics are not covered by copyright, there's a decades old court precedent about that.

That's another conversation, and is not necessarily has strong a position as you might think. Suffice it to say, it has not been tested in court for a very long time, and current mechanics are much more complex than those the precedent was based on. Many legal professionals wonder whether that would survive a legal challenge today.

People debate whether that applies to TTRPGs as well. I've read some articles by a copyright attorney that made strong cases that it does. Robert Bodine who runs Frylock's Gaming and Feekery made a series of articles talking about the precedent and what it means and how it applies to TTRPGs after Hasbro tried to threaten him in a C&D over his One Stop Statblocks project, and Hasbro backed down rather than fight him in court. (Because as a copyright attorney himself, he can fight them to completion, he doesn't have to pay for an attorney).

Bear in mind, he had an agenda there. He was trying his case in the court of public opinion (and doing a great job, and I applaud him for it!), but that wasn't a strong example of what we're talking about. The true test will only happen in an actual courtroom, and let's face it, if WotC were to go after anyone there are many, many much more egregious targets. A C&D is nothing. I've had a hundred C&Ds over the last 27 years of running this site.